Review: The Flower With Petals of Steel

Smug surgeon Gianni Garko accidentally kills his mistress with the title floral sculpture. Panicking and not wanting to get caught, he grinds the corpse up in a meat grinder. He thinks he’s safe, the girl has disappeared but nothing points back to him.. However, his ex Carroll Baker – the sister of the deceased – thinks Garko did something to her and isn’t shy in letting him know. Meanwhile, the cops start sniffing around and all of a sudden Garko is getting nervous. Then the threatening phone calls start, claiming to know what Garko did and threatening to expose him as a murderer (accidental or not) if financial arrangements are not made towards them. However, he’s still composed enough to be shagging his other mistress, sexy secretary Pilar Velazquez.

 

Carroll Baker was a pretty decent star in Hollywood films of the 50s and early 60s, but by the late 60s her career choices got…curious. She was appearing in all kinds of softcore exploitation films, mostly European and mostly terrible (“Orgasmo” and “Paranoia” spring to mind), plus several giallo films as well. This 1973 mystery/thriller with giallo touches from director Gianfranco Piccioli (far more prolific as a producer) is better than some of the shit Baker found herself in, but is pretty forgettable.

 

It’s good-looking and good-sounding and there’s some occasional effective creepiness. On the whole though, the unlikeable assortment of characters results in a mystery that frankly isn’t very interesting. Hell, it’s not even very mysterious so long as you’ve seen a couple of movies in your lifetime. Scripted by the director and Gianni Martucci (“Naked Girl Murdered in the Park”, a title that doesn’t leave much to the imagination), with very few viable suspects, the culprit isn’t terribly well-hidden. It’s also very slow-moving, I grew impatient. It also climaxes with the least sexy and most ridiculous underwater Sapphic sex scene you’ll ever see. Even “Emmanuelle” wouldn’t have much interest in scuba sex. The music score by Marcello Giombini (The solid spaghetti western “Sabata”, Joe D’Amato’s infamous “Anthropophagus”) is good, Carroll Baker is well-cast, I didn’t much care.

 

Subpar murder-mystery with mostly unappealing participants and a mystery that isn’t much cop. Attractive, but that’s about it. You’ve seen better.

 

Rating: C

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Hellraiser (2022)

Recovering junkie Odessa A’zion accompanies scuzzy boyfriend Drew Starkey on a break-in where all they find is a weird puzzle box. A’zion later opens the box and after some weird shit happens, A’zion and Starkey figure it might be a good idea to learn more about this messed up trinket. Goran Visnjic plays a millionaire who possessed the box before our protagonist nicked it.   Is there any point in remaking/rebooting “Hellraiser” when the 1987 adaptation of Clive Barker’s original text was written and directed by Barker himself? And is considered a horror classic? On evidence here, absolutely not. Directed by David Bruckner ( “The Signal” ) and scripted by Ben Collins ( “The Night House” ) and Luke Piotrowski (ditto) this is an entirely tedious affair. I took a long time to get on board with the 1987 “Hellraiser” , I have to admit. It was wildly imaginative and original, like a nightmare transplanted on to film. However, the characters were stone cold and left me similarly chil...
Read more

Review: Cinderella (1950)

The story of poor young Cinderella (voiced by Ilene Woods), treated as a servant by her nasty stepmother (voiced by Eleanor Audley), and dismissed by her thoroughly rotten, ugly stepsisters. Her only friends are a group of mice, who are forever being menaced by a cat named Lucifer (or as I call him, Grumpy Cheshire Cat). The King (hoping to find a wife for his charming son) is throwing a ball and every available young woman is invited to attend, and Cinderella is most excited to go. However, her stepmother and stepsisters do all they can to prevent this from happening. But with help from the mice and one fairy godmother (voiced by Verna Felton) later, and Cinderella looks set to attend the ball. You know the rest, folks.   Lovely 1950 Disney animated movie from directors Clyde Geronimi ( “Peter Pan” , “Lady and the Tramp” ), Wilfred Jackson ( “Fantasia” , “Alice in Wonderland” , “Peter Pan” ) & Hamilton Luske ( “Pinocchio” , “Fantasia” , “Peter Pan” ), that is a bit t...
Read more

Review: Jinnah

The story of Mohammed Ali Jinnah (Sir Christopher Lee) the politically moderate founder of Pakistan. A Muslim lawyer, Jinnah fought to form a separate nation from India for the Muslim minority, whilst Mahatma Gandhi (Sam Dastor) wished for India to stay united and proposed Jinnah as the new PM as a compromise. James Fox plays British viceroy Lord Mountbatten, Indira Varma plays Jinnah’s wife, and veteran bit player Vernon Dobtcheff plays a British dignitary.   Although Christopher Lee’s title performance received some critical notice and the actor himself was very proud of the work, this modestly budgeted 1998 biopic from director Jamil Dehlavi ( “Immaculate Conception” with Melissa Leo) and co-writer Farrukh Dhondy ( “Red Mercury” with Stockard Channing and Ron Silver) was largely ignored at the time and still very little-known today. Part of that is probably due to the poor marketing of the film, and difficulty in finding a distributor. It’s hard to get people to talk abo...
Read more